Manuel Luis Quezon

Manuel Luis Quezon
2nd President of the Republic of the Philippines
In office November 15, 1935 – January 2, 1942
Preceded by	Macario Sakay
Succeeded by	José P. Laurel (de facto)
President of the Philippine Commonwealth (In exile)
In office January 2, 1942 – August 1, 1944
Preceded by	Office created
Succeeded by	Sergio Osmeña

Manuel Luis Quezon y Molina (Baler, August 19, 1878 – Saranac Lake, New York, August 1, 1944) was a Filipino jurist, soldier, politician and statesman who attained great preeminence in the political sphere of the Philippines.

Quezon was the first President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, an office he held from November 15, 1935 until his death on August 1, 1944. On December 31, 1941, he had been reelected to the office. He is regarded as the second President of the Philippines, after Emilio Aguinaldo, whose administration did not receive international recognition.

A defender of Hispanic values and a convinced nationalist, he delivered his speeches in Spanish, even during his diplomatic missions before the United States House of Representatives, where he had no qualms about dismantling many of the distortions of the propaganda spread during the Spanish–American War, which sought to justify the invasion of the archipelago. One of his most famous quotes was:

"I would rather have a country run like hell by Filipinos than a country magnificently administered by Americans"

Biography

Youth

He was born in Baler, in the Province of Tayabas (present-day Province of Aurora). His mother was a Spanish mestiza, while his father, Lucio, was a mestizo of Chinese origin who rose to be a sergeant of the Guardia Civil in the islands.

Although his mother surely must have influenced his instruction, according to Quezon's own testimony he received his primary education mainly through the school established in his town, which was part of the free public education system that the Spanish government had implemented in the Philippines, and in which his father was a teacher.

Already as president, he had the occasion to refute before the United States House of Representatives the repeated propagandistic assertion by the invading American forces that:

".."when the American flag was first unfurled in that part of the globe there was no adequate system of public instruction. There was only a system on paper, promulgated by the Spanish government, which was never put into practice".

An indignant Manuel Luis Quezon replied:

"..there were public schools in the Philippines long before the American occupation, and that, in fact, I had been educated in one of those schools, even though my native town is such a small town, isolated in the mountains of the northeastern part of the Island of Luzon. What I said then I reiterate now.

..as far back as the year 1866, when the total population of the Philippine Islands was only 4,411,261 souls and when the total number of municipalities in the Archipelago was 900, the total number of public schools was 841 for boys and 833 for girls, and the total number of boys attending those schools was 135,098 and of girls 95,260. And these schools were real buildings and the pupils were living, intelligent, alert human beings. In 1892 the number of schools had increased to 2,137, of which 1,087 were for boys and 1,050 for girls. I have seen with my own eyes many of these schools and thousands of those pupils. They were not "parish schools," but schools created, supported and maintained by the Government".

He later enrolled as a boarder at the Colegio de San Juan de Letrán, where he completed his secondary education. He then began studying law at the University of Santo Tomas; he received his license as a lawyer in 1903.

In 1898, his father Lucio and his brother Pedro were ambushed and murdered by armed men while returning from Baler to Nueva Ecija. Some historians believe they were killed by bandits who robbed them of their money, while others believe the murders may have been related to their loyalty to the Spanish Government.

Quezon married his cousin Aurora Aragon, with whom he had four children: María Aurora, María Zeneida, Luisa Corazón Paz and Manuel.

Philippine–American War and political career

He fought in the Philippine–American War as an aide to Aguinaldo, and after the consolidation of the American invasion, Quezon began his path toward public life as a civil servant. He worked for about two years in administration and topography; he began his career as an official upon being appointed prosecutor, first in Mindoro and then in Tayabas. He subsequently obtained a post as councilor; in 1906 he was elected governor of Tayabas as an independent.

He then rose in a political career that eventually led him to become the majority floor leader in the House of Representatives of the Philippines, later becoming a Senator and President of the Philippine Senate, as well as the first person to hold that office.

His political career and prestige ultimately led him to the presidency of the Philippine Commonwealth, which he held for nine years, during which he focused on consolidating the Philippines as a nation, decreeing the reorganization of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, approving a process of governmental reorganization, promoting commerce in the Philippines through treaties and economic measures, in addition to proposing an agrarian reform and carrying out a fight against corruption that sought to strengthen the country's institutions.

A staunch defender of Philippine independence, he spoke out against the American occupation. He was one of the most prominent figures in the creation of the nationalist party. In 1907 he was elected to the first Philippine Assembly, where he served as leader of the majority bloc and Chairman of the appropriations committee. Between 1909 and 1916 he was commissioned to permanently represent the Philippines in the United States House of Representatives, charged with negotiating the so-called Jones Law on autonomy.

Presidency

In 1935 Manuel Quezon triumphed in the first national presidential elections after independence, defeating Emilio Aguinaldo and Bishop Gregorio Aglipay. Although the original terms established a six-year mandate with no possibility of reelection, the Constitution was amended to allow him to extend a term, and in 1941 he was reelected. In 1937 he made a state visit to Mexico City, where he met with President Lázaro Cárdenas del Río.

In an act of remarkable humanity, Quezon, in cooperation with United States High Commissioner Paul V. McNutt, facilitated the entry into the Philippines of Jewish refugees fleeing the fascist regimes of Europe, and promoted a project to settle the refugees in Mindanao.

After the Japanese invasion of the Philippines during the Second World War, Quezon established a Government in exile, located in the United States, from where he fought and tried to exert pressure to obtain the international support needed to confront the Japanese. There he served as a member of the Pacific War Council, in which capacity he signed the United Nations declaration of war against the Rome–Berlin–Tokyo Axis; in exile he wrote his autobiography, titled The Good Fight (1946).

Death and legacy

Quezon contracted tuberculosis and died on the shore of Saranac Lake, New York, on August 1, 1944. He was initially buried in Arlington National Cemetery; after the end of the war his body was carried by the USS Princeton (CV-37) for burial in the North Cemetery of Manila, and later moved to Quezon City to the monument of the Quezon Memorial Circle.

In 2015 the Board of Directors of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation approved the posthumous award of the Wallenberg Medal to President Quezon and to the people of the Philippines for having helped, between 1937 and 1941, the victims of the Holocaust. President Benigno Aquino III and María Zeneida Quezon Avanceña, the former president's 94-year-old daughter, were duly informed of this recognition.

Quotes

• "I would rather have a country run like hell by Filipinos than a country magnificently administered by Americans. No matter how bad a government of Filipinos may be, we can always decide to change it."

• "The peoples of Latin America believe and feel that the Filipinos form part of that great family, the children of Spain. Thus, although Spain ceased to govern the countries many years ago and although another nation is sovereign in the Philippines, the peoples of Latin America feel like brothers to the people of the Philippines. It is the Spanish language that still unites us with those peoples, and the Spanish language will unite us with those peoples eternally if we have the wisdom and patriotism to preserve it."

• "My loyalty to my party ends where my loyalty to my country begins."

• "Social justice is far more beneficial when applied as a matter of sentiment, and not of law."

See also

• Education in the Philippines during Spanish rule

External links

• The Philippine Presidency Project: Manuel L. Quezon
• Minibiografía de Manuel L. Quezon (in Spanish)
• Harris, Bonnie. 2005. Cantor Joseph Cysner: From Zbaszyn to Manila: The creation of an American Holocaust haven.